My attractive and charismatic husband (yeah he reads my blog) is a keen gardener. Gardening is his main hobby and he finds it relaxing and fulfilling. Unfortunately gardening can work out to be an expensive hobby if you are not careful. Plants, compost, fertiliser, pots, chip bark etc all come at a cost and as a family on one income with three small children the garden is not a financial priority. As a result he has had to find ways to save money and has become a money saving gardener. Here I share his tips;
1. Collect your seeds. When your plants are ready collect the seeds. Keep them in a labelled envelope and plant them the next year. Free plants year after year, bargain.
2. Buy your plants from school fete’s. It is significantly cheaper to buy plants from school fete’s than from garden centres. So visit school fetes and look out for a bargain.
3.Innovative planting. Any container that can hold soil and have holes made in the bottom can be a plant pot. So use tin cans , plastic bottles cut in half, even old shoes to plant in. Not only is this tip money saving but it can also give your garden a unique, creative look.
4. Use coffee grounds on your garden as fertiliser. A reminder from last weeks money saving monday. Free fertiliser.
5. Divide your plants. Be patient (a useful quality for gardeners anyway) and wait for your plants to be big enough to divide. Then split them up and hey presto one plant becomes two, four, six etc.
6. Composting. Compost your waste and you have good quality free fertiliser, brilliant.
7. Swap and blag. Grow extra seedlings and offer them to other gardeners for swaps. In fact gardeners being the sharing kind will often give a cutting for free if you ask them nicely. So if you see something you love in someone else’s garden don’t be afraid to ask.
So there you have it, money saving gardening tips. If any of you have anymore money saving ideas for the garden then do share them in the comment section please.
My tip is “Herbs”. OK so they’re technically not edible on their own but a lot of the tasty ones – Thyme, Rosemary, Chives, Oregano to name a couple – once they’ve taken hold will grow FOREVER. No digging up and re-seeding every spring. Quite a few are evergreen too so your Christmas roast can be adorned with fresh Sage and Thyme straight from the garden.
Strawberries are quite hardy too, give them some mottled shade and they’ll go bonkers (and again, like the herbs, requiring no special treatment) and every June/July you’ll have free strawberries with no money or effort involved.
I’m getting into my perennials a lot now, which is any plant (e.g. Garlic) that you can plant once, forget about and it just grows all the time, all year, every year. Makes things like tomatoes (replanting, nurturing, feeding) seem like a ton of unnecessary effort
This is what my Chives (and Rosemary and Oregano in the background) looked like yesterday. Awesome! http://twitpic.com/9uzr7z
Rhubarb – that’s perennial too, dies off every winter then magically reappears in the spring!
I don’t have tips but you’ve given me a few! I’ve got a gorgeous garden which sort of handles itself but I’d like to do more with it though like you, money is right. Thanks for the inspiration!
Brilliant tips. I make Weed Tea to use as fertiliser – gets stinky but it’s organic and cheap, and the kids love stirring the “soup”. Another tip is to look out for people selling seedlings outside their house (normally more prevalent in small towns and villages) as they’re usually dirt cheap (sorry about the pun!).